A long time ago (January 1st!) on lolmac's journal entry here, I made a comment in reaction to her posting and the mouseover on the picture as follows:

"If he really wants to outdo Mac's shirt, he just needs to get Carter to figure out a way to get his hair to change color in waves like one of those fiber optic desk-lamp thingys. I'm sure she could figure something out...

Can't you just see Hammond during the briefing trying desperately (and ultimately futilely) not to ask what the hell is going on with the Colonel's hair and why, lest he encourage them by reacting?"

lolmac asked me to write this bit of crack fic, and suggested that some alien technology might be responsible.

I was going to immediately fire back with a little comment fic. But I fell asleep instead.

And then rl got hoppin' and it's taken me until now.

So without further ado:

Title: A Hair Brained Scene

Season: Sometime after both Legacy and Shades of Grey, probably 4th Season

Spoilers: Minor ones for both the above mentioned episodes. And it isn't a shocker that SG-11 is not the good karma team of the SGC, right?

Warnings: Silliness. Do not take seriously. Seriously. I mean it. (Anybody want a peanut?)

Disclaimer: I'm messing with characters that don't belong to me, and putting them in my bizarre off-kilter sandbox. Since I'm not charging admission, and they can go right back when I'm done, if these shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended...

Synopsis: He is the very model of a modern Major General. He knows things.

A Hair Brained Scene

In hindsight he should have known from the moment that SG-1 returned through the gate that something was up. The hood should have been a dead give-away.

They came through the event horizon in all their arctic gear, followed briefly by a swirl of wind-tossed snow before the wormhole shut down. Within seconds three members of the team had torn off the heavy long-sleeved mittens and unzipped their parkas enough to lower their hoods. Teal'c appeared to be enjoying the opportunity to breathe in the warmed air of the gateroom. Major Carter was trying to finger comb her hair into some semblance of order in the wake of the static the fur-lined hood and the black wool toque beneath it had left, and Dr. Jackson was peering myopically and with some frustration at the hopelessly fogged glasses he held in the hand that was not already occupied with the bulky mittens.

Jack O'Neill faced his commanding officer from inside the tube created by the small round opening of the hood. There was a tightness about his eyes that the General associated with Jack hiding pain, and the flashing lights on the bank of machines over his shoulder seemed to be reflecting off the fur of the parka's hood. Funny that he'd never noticed that those lights could do that before...

"We got the mining rights, General, " he said, unclipping his P-90 from its harness (much let out to allow for the bulk of the parka) and handing it off to a waiting airman. "Permission to..." He gestured broadly in the general direction of the door to the General's left where the path to both the infirmary and the head lay. Which ever facility O'Neill was seeking, the General was inclined to grant him permission to reach it.

Funny that the blinky light effect hadn't been noticeable on the other three. Maybe it was an angle thing, or something about the fur - which was after all some kind of high performance synthetic - might be reflective. Maybe he would ask Major Carter about it after the briefing the next morning.

It wasn't much later that he passed the infirmary on the way to meet with Dr. Feltzmann about the results that trace amounts of trinium in their diets seemed to be having on the reproductive rates of laboratory mice.

"So then she stuck it in him, and Jack just started glowing-" Dr. Jackson was saying with the rapidity and emphasis that indicated that he was in full anthropological excitement mode.

"I was not glowing, Daniel!" This was Jack O'Neill at his snarky grumpiest.

"Sir," the tone of Major Carter's voice was mildly chiding. "You were."

"Indeed. It was very colorful." This was Teal'c.

"I was not glowing! Maybe my -"

"Colonel, if you don't get back on that gurney I'm going to get out my big needles" cut in Dr. Fraiser's voice. "Now where did she stick it in?"

"Right down there!" said the Colonel in tones of mounting exasperation.

"Oh, my!" said the doctor. "That seems to be right up in there!"

The General decided he really didn't want to know. Not now, not ever, if he didn't have to, although he was morally certain that there would be a report, and he would have to read it and initial it. Repeatedly.

I know nossssing, nossssing! he thought to himself in the accents of Sargent Schultz from Hogan's Heroes, and hurried past to the bio labs.

He really should have known better. He was a Major General in the Air Force. Major Generals are never caught by surprise on their own bases. Major Generals like Olympian Gods live in a place where the air is thin, the perks are many, and there is a good view from above of all the actions of the mere mortals toiling below. He should have investigated immediately instead of turning a blind eye.

He'd have to be quite blind not to notice this.

SG-1 was seated around the briefing table in their usual positions, but with the unscheduled and unordered addition of Dr. Fraiser one chair further down the table than Daniel. In direct contravention of normal military convention, which required that covers be removed indoors, Jack O'Neill was wearing a ball cap, and sitting with his elbows on the briefing room table, and his fists over his temples. His face was still a bit pinched, a sure sign that he was feeling a headache he wasn't acknowledging. And from the glimpses of the hair that was not covered by either his hat or his hands, there was a rippling, color-shifting glow, like the fiber optic sculpture that Tessa had so admired in the Discovery Store at the mall a few Sundays ago.

He was not going to be surprised on his own base. He was a Major General. He was all knowing, and all seeing.

He crossed to his seat, and as they saw him, Dr. Fraiser, Major Carter, and Jack O'Neill all rose to their feet, as military protocol required. Teal'c too stood up, and bowed his head in acknowledgment, but Dr. Jackson was lost in his perusal of a folder open and partially propped on his coffee mug, and didn't notice the General's arrival. The hair at Jack's temples looked exactly like that sculpture, although with a wider range of colors.

He knew all about this. He was all knowing. All seeing. Unflappable. He. Would. Not. Stare.

He sat.

They sat.

Daniel Jackson looked up.

"Oh, General! Hi!" he said.

"Dr. Jackson," he returned, trying valiantly to keep from reflexively turning his eyes toward the source of pulsating light.

"Colonel."

"Yes, sir!"

"Your cover!"

"Yes, sir." This in tones of deepest reluctance. He reached one long-fingered hand towards the brim, but then pulled back. "Even if it's my lucky hat, sir?"

Hammond swore that Airman Wood at the small station near the stairs let out an audible snigger. He glared in the airman's direction. The airman was suddenly very busy with the laptop open before him.

"Military protocol must be upheld Colonel."

"Yessir."

The Colonel, with visible reluctance, removed the hat.

It was really quite dazzling. The dark hairs that represented the color he'd been born with were unchanged, but every white hair on the Colonel's head was shimmering with an ever-shifting light show in wave after wave of intense color.

Hammond couldn't help himself any longer.

"Dr Fraiser! What in the hell is going on here?"

"Well I thought you might want me to sit in on this briefing so I could share -"

"I have no objections to your presence, Doctor. But I do want to know what the hell is going on with Colonel O'Neill's hair!"

"It's really quite fascinating, General!" Daniel broke in. "The people of the planet are descended from several peri-Arctic cultures, including the Inuit, the Yup'ik, and the Kalaalit, all of whom retain the very dark hair of their youth much longer than those of Norse and Celtic descent like Jack do, so generally people as grey as he is are rare and quite elderly, well when we arrived -"

"They said if I didn't have one of their implant thingies no one could take me seriously at the bargaining table. The other leaders had one. They were glowy, I wasn't. Daniel swore it wouldn't hurt anything -"

"It didn't! Dr. Fraiser says you're fine."

"My head, Daniel!"

"Okay, so it does give you a bit of a headache -"

"And Lincoln left the Ford's Theater with a bit of a concussion!"

"Okay, a pretty bad headache. But they say that none of their people get that!"

"Of course they don't."

"Jack, I'm sure if they'd known how it would affect you -"

"Dr. Fraiser says that she can probably remove it soon, sir. And the imaging technology that Dr. Caterson is working on seems scientifically sound, and likely to give her the information she needs to be able to safely-"

"I just want to be very sure that I can remove it without any adverse effects. It looks like the main module is very close to the brain stem after all -"

"I can teach you a more advanced technique of the kel'no'reem that you have already learned that may -"

"I have," the Colonel said, in a quiet voice and with vast dignity and patience "a wee little bit of a headache." He scrunched up his face in pain, while simultaneously indicating a very small measurement with his thumb and forefinger. "So will you all just SHUT UP!"

Silence.

When he finally got around to those memoirs, mused Hammond, he was going to have to include a chapter illustrating the way that the nature of each team's adventures were clearly shaped by the characters of the leaders in charge of each team. The Marines of SG-3 under Makepeace had come back with adventures highlighting intrepidity and requiring stubbornness to persevere. Now under Griff, they seemed to be drawing the missions that required loyalty and a fair number of them were humorous in a dry sort of way. And SG-11. Here Hammond sighed. The new fellow, Calabrese, was even more lugubrious than the last one. He had a bad feeling about their chances. And SG-1? If it wasn't heroism, it was buffoonery.

He looked down at the reflected colors dancing across the blank white pages of his notepad. He tapped his pencil, and as he did so out of the corner of his eye (because really, with a visual display like that, how could his eyes fail to be drawn that way?) he saw Jack pinching the bridge of his nose.

Must be a helluva headache.

"Dr. Fraiser." the General said quietly. "I want that thing removed as soon as you can manage it and still ensure the Colonel's continued safety and good health. Major Carter, I would like a report on what the device is, and how it works as soon as possible after it is removed."

"Yes, sir. It seems to be related to the technology which the Goa'uld use in their pain sticks, but at a much lower power level, and we haven't yet determined what generates the colors, but-"

Hammond held up a hand. "Save it for the report Major. Dr. Jackson? May I assume that you can fill me in on the details of the deal we've made with these people?"

"Yes, General."

"Very good. In my office in five minutes then. Colonel -"

The Colonel looked up. It was incredibly challenging to take him seriously with his hair standing up in all directions and impersonating one of those fiber optic statues, but for the pinched look to his face, and dark smudges under each slightly squinted eye.

Heroism and buffoonery in equal measure.

"Son, go down to the infirmary and let Dr. Fraiser give you something for that headache. Get some rest. You look as if you could use it."

"Yes, sir." The ghost of a smile on one side of his mouth and rich brown eyes raised to meet his own were a show of gratitude. "Don't mind if I do."

"And Teal'c?"

"Yes, General Hammond?"

"See that he gets there safely."

A bending of the neck in lieu of a good old fashioned Tau'ri "Yes, sir!"

Hammond rose, allowing the others to move off to their assigned tasks.

He really hoped that his memoirs could be widely read some day. Humor and pathos, heroism and pusillanimity, comedy and tragedy, they were all there. He wondered whether they would end up filed in the nonfiction section or in fiction.

He sighed.

Around here, when it came to sanity, he sometimes felt he walked a fine line every single day.

As soon as he finished his meeting with Dr. Jackson, he would call his daughter, describe that sculpture and ask her to go down to the mall and buy two. One for Tessa's birthday in three weeks, and one for Jack O'Neill to wake up to after they did the surgery to remove that thing.

Because he was a Major General. He knew everything, from what his elder granddaughter wanted for her birthday, to how to get a chuckle out of Jack O'Neill (well, after the pro forma grimace, anyway). Major Generals in the Air Force are never caught off balance. They know.

Oooh! Thank you for the heads up. "Fur" to "fir": That's my kind of typo. I'd just recently commented on a journal that the smell of balsam was one of my favorite scents, and I guess there was mental leakage.

Yeah, there is something about those early seasons isn't there? Everyone was finding their groove, the Goa'uld were at their campy overdressed best, Jack was there for everyone else to bounce off of, and Papa Hammond was in his full glory.

Yeah, with all those strong and quirky personalities involved, the role really needed someone with a forceful and take-charge personality, yet who was able to be human and forgiving as well. They got that in spades with George Hammond.